The Clerk raised a long, bony finger in misguided triumph. From his squinting, Doyle realized the unpleasant little man was nearly as blind as he was deaf. And unless he was very much mistaken, this venomous old bookworm was a retired proctor himself; in his day Doyle had suffered plenty at the gleefully sadistic hands of the man's ilk.
"I am looking for the office of Professor Armond Sacker," Doyle said, producing Sacker's calling card—they had by now traveled twenty yards down the hall, and Doyle felt no impulse whatsoever to assist the toadish misanthrope back to bis feet—holding it just out of the sweeping arc of the man's reach, "and I can assure you, sir, my business with him is exceptionally legitimate."
"What sort of business?"
"Business I am not prepared to discuss with you, sir. Business of a more than passing urgency. And I daresay that if you are not prepared to assist me straight off, it will put me in a very foul humor indeed," Doyle said, pointing his walking stick at the man and smiling intently.
"Term's over. He's not here," the Clerk admitted, fear or exhaustion tilting him toward the cooperative.
"Now we're getting somewhere. So there is, in fact, a Professor Armond Sacker."
"You're the one who wants to see him!"
"And having established that the good Professor walks among us, if we could now turn our attention to where the Professor might be—"
"I'm sure I don't know—"
"Take careful note, if you would, my choice of words, sir: 'might be,' not 'is,' employing the speculative, as in speculation, sir: Where might he be?"
With a jolt, the cart collided with the wall at the corridor's end. The Clerk slid down to the floor, legs splayed, back against the cart, his pinched visage as pink as a well-scrubbed pig. He pointed up and to the right at a nearby door.
"Ah," said Doyle. "The Professor's office?"
The Clerk nodded.
"You've been most helpful. If I should happen to speak with your superiors during my visit here, I shall not fail to mention your timely and generous assistance."
"Pleasure, sir. Pleasure indeed." The Clerk's treacly smile revealed a badly matched set of false choppers.
Doyle tipped his hat and entered Sacker's door, closing it after him. The room was high, square, and lined with dark-wooded bookshelves, serviced by a ladder resting against one wall. Crowding the central desk were stacks of haphazardly open volumes, maps, compasses, calipers, and other cartographic tools.
The smoldering dregs of a bowl of tobacco sent up weak mist from an ashtray. The pipe, an elaborately carved meerschaum, was warm to the touch—the office's occupant had vacated the room, at most, five minutes before, a departure hastened by Doyle's voice in the hall? This Sacker was nothing if not an odd fellow, but would he purposefully avoid Doyle after what they'd been through together? If so, for what conceivable reason?
Surveying the desk, Doyle cataloged two standard texts on ancient Greece, a volume of Euripides, a monograph on Sappho, and a well-worn Iliad. Maps of the central Turkish coast, dotted and lined with calculations. Doyle hazarded a guess that the object of this quest was the legendary city of Troy.
An overcoat and hat hung on a rack by the far door. A
walking stick leaned against the wall; a bit short for the lanky Sacker, Doyle thought. He opened the far door, which led to a small antechamber—no doubt where students sweated out their tutorials—and then passed through another door, leading into a vast hallway.
Perched on the newel posts on either side of a grand ascending staircase, large winged gargoyles stood sentry, scowling at one another: one a griffin, long of tooth and talon, the other a reptilian basilisk, scabrous and scaled. The day's last light through the leaded-glass windows imparted a ghostly glow to the marble walls and floors. Total darkness was only minutes away and, saving a penny during the holiday, none of the gas jets were alight. Doyle listened but heard no footfalls.
"Professor Sacker! ... Professor Sacker!"
No reply. A chill ran through him. He turned around. The gargoyles glared down at him from their posts in the stairwell. Doyle set off to find a privy—had those statues been facing his way when he entered? A memory of their having faced each other persisted—perhaps Sacker had gone to answer nature's call.
He found every door along the hallway locked. Turning repeatedly as the corridor meandered, by the time Doyle realized he could no longer see his hand before him, he was not at all sure where he was. The air felt as frigid and heavy as the blackness was dense. He wiped the sweat from his hands. Fear of the dark was not something he commonly fell prey to, but after the last two days all such presumptions were forfeit. Attempting to retrace his steps—there had been lights burning in Sacker's office, a place that now seemed a haven of warmth and security—he kept one hand on the cool marble wall and took each step cautiously.
An intersection. Did I turn right or left here? His answer was not confident. Right then.
Fear of the dark is a primitive, instinctual leftover, he reminded himself: Our remote forebears spent the better part of their lives groping blindly in the dark- —and since there could be huge, carnivorous predators lying in ambush around every turn, it seemed altogether a very sensible response—tout that by no measure meant the same dangers still existed in the modern civilized—What was that?
Doyle stopped. A sound, some distance away. What was it?
Stay calm. It could be help, a neutral or friendly presence. Even Sacker himself. Perhaps we'll hear it again. Perhaps it would be a fine idea if we didn 't move from this spot until we do. Err on the side of caution, and not only because we're plunged into absolute darkness in an unfathomable maze and there are pitiless, unspeakable horrors tracking us from who knows which side of the etheric membrane—
Wait ... there it was again.
Try to identify. Not a footstep, was it? No. No smack of heel, no shuffling skid or impact on marble whatsoever.
Go on, Doyle, you know perfectly well what you heard.
Wings. A flap of wings. Leathery, cartilaginous.
Well, perhaps a sparrow or pigeon's flown through a window and gotten lost in the halls—let's be honest, shall we? Late December, even if birds were still about, that was not the exercising of a small or even midsized wingspan, if there exists anywhere in the world a bird that could produce that sound, that could displace that much air—
It's coming this way. Those first two flaps issued from a stationary position, loosening, limbering up, almost as if the—Doyle, put your mind in order, man: Allow into your heart the idea that those stone gargoyles on the stairs can fly, and in two ticks you 'II find yourself chained to a pallet in Bedlam.
On the other hand, something immense is moving through the air and coming closer, so from a purely precautionary standpoint, let's move on. Don't run, Doyle, use your walking stick ahead of you, like that—quietly, please—find a door, there's a good fellow, any door will do—got one: locked. Damn. On to the next.
Rummaging for bird facts—do they see well in the dark? Depends on the bird, doesn't it? How's their sense of smell? Do they have one? They must: Their entire lives constitute an uninterrupted search for food. Terrifically reassuring. What have we squirreled away in there about the eating habits of gargoyles?
It's not possible, but the wings seem to be advancing and receding simultaneously. Unless there are two of them; one on either side of the stairs for a grand total of—enough!
A door, Doyle, and please hurry, because one of them just
rounded the corner we recently turned, which puts it fifty feet behind us and closing rapidly—
There: Grip the handle and turn and push and enter and close the door behind you. Can you lock the door? No bolt. Can you recall any avian facts that would support the possibility of a bird turning a doorknob? Be serious. Is there a window in this door? Solid oak. Blessed old, thick old door, God save the English craftsman—